A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Jeddah to Islamabad, carrying Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz back from their visit to Saudi Arabia, was diverted to Lahore on Monday.
Flight PK842 was supposed to land in Islamabad at 10:30pm on Monday night but was diverted to Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore and landed there at 9:25pm.
The commercial flight was carrying 393 passengers which had the official delegation returning from Pakistan, including the Defence Minister, the PM, the CM and their family members.
Videos circulating online showed passengers expressing resentment for the problems caused to them.
After offloading about 79 passengers at Lahore, the flight did take off for Islamabad and landed there at 11:17pm.
Well-known actor Sami Khan has narrated the story of a difficult plane journey last year. Sami Khan recently appeared as a guest on a ‘Life Green Hai’ show where he had an interesting discussion on various topics. “Last year I was traveling from Karachi to Lahore in the month of Ramadan, so during the flight, all the passengers were told that the weather was clear on the way, but if there is a storm in Lahore, there might be some trouble.”
The actor continued, recalling that the plane encountered turbulence as it neared Lahore. “When the plane was about to land on the runway at Lahore Airport, they heard a strange noise. The passenger sitting next to me looked outside and said that the tires of the plane did not open.”
He said, “After hearing this from the person sitting next to me, I said that now we can only recite Holy verses. Instead of landing there, the plane flew back to the top. All the passengers were reciting kalimah and it seemed to everyone that now death is upon us.”
Sami Khan was hoping that they would not try to land the plane there again. “The weather in Lahore was very bad and then the pilot announced that the plane won’t land here. It is quite dangerous so we are going to Islamabad after which the plane was landed at Islamabad Airport safely”
A new advisory issued by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has instructed pilots and the cabin crew to not observe fast in the month of Ramzan during flights, reports The Express Tribune.
The directive issued by the manager of the flight safety department at PIA outlined guidelines regarding fasting during the flights.
It said that fasting can potentially decrease alertness and impair decision-making abilities, which could lead to serious consequences in the emergencies. It also said that even though it is technically feasible, this may reduce the margin of safety, as per corporate safety management and the aircrew medical center’s advice.
The official circular emphasised that although fasting is a highly important practice in Islam, it disrupts the normal routine and can lead to dehydration, a drop in glucose level, and other physiological changes.
The directive clearly instructed all fasting cockpit and cabin crew members to abstain from operating flights, highlighting that self-exemptions cannot be claimed even under state law. It emphasised compliance with rules and regulations to ensure the safety of passengers and crew.
It took firefighters more than eight hours to extinguish the fire that engulfed a Japan Airlines jet after it struck another plane on landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Tuesday. It took 12 crew members just minutes to usher hundreds of people on board to safety.
All but one of the six people on the smaller aircraft were killed, but all 379 Japan Airlines passengers and crew escaped down emergency slides minutes before the Airbus was engulfed in flames late Tuesday.
The blackened husk of the airliner, still sitting on the tarmac Wednesday, bore witness to just how dangerous their escape had been. Several hundred metres (yards) away lay the remains of the coast guard’s DHC-8 aircraft.
The captain of the coast guard plane — which had been bound for the New Year’s Day earthquake zone in central Japan — was its lone survivor but suffered serious injuries.
Footage on Tuesday showed a ball of fire erupting from underneath the airliner shortly after landing and coming to a halt on its nose after its front landing gear failed.
“It was getting hot inside the plane, and I thought, to be honest, I would not survive,” one female passenger told broadcaster NHK.
“I thought we landed normally. But then I realised I was smelling smoke,” a woman with a small child told NHK.
“I needed to protect my daughter. That was the only thing in my mind,” she added.
Another passenger described surviving the crash as a “miracle”.
“I bounced off my seat from the impact when we landed,” the 28-year-old man told Nikkei Asia.
“We made it just in the nick of time. It’s a miracle we survived.”
Takuya Fujiwara from the Japan Transport Safety Board told reporters that the flight recorder and the voice recorder from the coast guard plane had been found, but those of the passenger jet were still being sought.
“We are surveying the situation. Various parts are scattered on the runway,” Fujiwara said, adding that the authority planned to interview several people involved.
Asked at a briefing whether the Japan Airlines flight had landing permission, officials at the major carrier said: “Our understanding is that it was given.”
Widely shared video footage shows flight attendants at the front of a darkened cabin gesturing for passengers to remain seated and thanking them for their cooperation. At one point, the camera pans across to show a window frame filled with orange light.
“Please get me out of here,” one woman shouts in the video. A child is heard asking: “Why don’t you just open the doors?”
The actions of crew and passengers have been credited with averting tragedy. Incredibly, none received serious injuries.
none appeared to have paused to retrieve hand luggage from overhead lockers, ensuring a clear route to the emergency exits. Less than two hours earlier, the passengers had watched a JAL safety video urging them to do exactly that. In the video, a flight attendant warns: “Leave your baggage when you evacuate!”, extending her open palms for emphasis. An animated sequence then shows the damage that bags and high-heeled shoes can cause to the inflatable evacuation slides.
Aviation experts said the unshakeable composure displayed by the flight attendants combined with the high level of cooperation among passengers probably prevented a deeply unsettling experience from becoming a major disaster.
“I can’t speculate on what happened here but human error will probably be found as a contributing cause,” Doug Drury, aviation expert at Central Queensland University, told AFP.
“Airlines are required to be able to empty an airplane of all passengers and crew within 90 seconds. The flight crews train for events quite frequently in simulation and it is a complicated process that as we saw was completed without fail,” he said.
The Airbus A340 initially had been bound for Nicaragua when it was detained last Thursday at Vatry airport, east of Paris, where it had stopped for refuelling. A donkey flight is an illegal immigration used for unauthorized entry into foreign countries like the USA, UK, Canada etc.
It had arrived from the United Arab Emirates and was halted after an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking.
Of the original 303 people on the passenger list, 276 were on the plane that arrived in Mumbai before dawn on Tuesday.
Passengers began walking out onto the concourse four hours later but refused to speak to a large crowd of waiting journalists and covered their faces to shield their identities.
It was unclear whether the arrivals were questioned by authorities and India’s government has yet to issue a statement on their return.
Among those staying behind in France were two people questioned by police there over suspected people trafficking.
A judicial source said they were released after it was established the passengers had boarded the plane of their own free will.
French authorities are continuing to investigate the case for a potential violation of immigration laws, but no longer for people trafficking, judicial sources said.
Another 25 passengers sought asylum in France including five minors, local officials said.
A source close to the inquiry told AFP that those aboard were likely workers in the UAE bound for Nicaragua, which they intended to use as a staging post for journeys to the United States or Canada.
Authorisation for the plane to leave France came after a court ruled that any further detention of three of its passengers would be illegal.
The passengers of the flight, operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines, were put up at Vatry airport during the investigation.
Beds, toilets and showers were installed, the local prefecture said, while police prevented press and outsiders from entering the airport.
The passengers included 11 unaccompanied minors, according to Paris prosecutors.
The Indian embassy in Paris posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that it was grateful for the “quick resolution” of the incident.
The 30 crew members were not detained. Some had handled the Dubai-Vatry leg while others were to take over for the flight to Nicaragua.
‘Mutual benefit’
The use of charter flights to aid migrants “is a relatively new phenomenon”, Manuel Orozco, director of migration issues at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP last month.
Orozco said he believed that airline operators and Nicaraguan airport authorities made “an economic calculation” for their “mutual benefit”.
Indian deputy foreign minister V. Muraleedharan this month told parliament that close to 100,000 illegal Indian migrants had attempted to enter the United States this year, citing US Customs and Border Protection data.
Last year the issue caught public attention when four Indians froze to death while trying to cross into the United States on foot from the Canadian border.
They were among a group of 11 people attempting the journey, with the remaining seven detained by US authorities.
Many Indian migrants seek passage to the United States for economic reasons.
But human rights experts say there are several other factors at play, including the oppression of minority communities in India and extreme visa backlogs.
Unlawful Indian migration abroad is such an established phenomenon that it forms the backdrop of the Bollywood comedy-drama “Dunki”, released in cinemas last week.
Starring Shah Rukh Khan, one of India’s most bankable film stars, “Dunki” delves into the various means by which Indians attempt the perilous journey to the West with the help of unscrupulous agents and corrupt border officials.
A Lufthansa plane that took off from Germany had to make an emergency landing in New Delhi’s Indra Gandhi’s airport after an intense fight broke out between a husband and wife.
On November 29, right after the take-off from Munich, a couple started fighting in the plane. Seeing the situation getting worse, pilots informed the control room. It directed the plane to land in Pakistan. On not getting permission, the pilots made an emergency landing in New Delhi and handed over the two passengers to airport security there.
The wife, a native of Thailand, complained that her German husband was threatening her. Passengers as well as the crew also witnessed him shouting and hurling things at his wife while reportedly being drunk.
According to Indian media, the German embassy has been contacted to handle the matter. The police is talking to airline staff to ascertain the sequence of events and check if an FIR needs to be registered.
The wife was travelling on a separate ticket and later asked the airline to continue her journey to Bangkok alone but she too was deboarded.
GPS signals for flights between Lahore and Karachi reportedly ran into difficulties in receiving signals.
The GPS signals got disrupted approximately 100 nautical miles around Karachi and Lahore.
Civil Aviation Authority has issued Notices to Airmen (NOTAM) regarding the problem and instructed the pilots of the aircraft to immediately inform them about difficulty in receiving the GPS signal.
Complaints were also received around Rahim Yar Khan Airport that the planes were not getting the signal.
This raises safety concerns for aircrafts.
According to Samaa news, issues regarding GPS signals have been raised before as well but it still has not been resolved.
A Delta Air Lines airplane was flying from Atlanta to Barcelona when two hours into the journey, they were forced to turn around because of a “biohazard issue” after one of the passengers developed severe diarrhoea.
In an audio posted on X (formerly Twitter), allegedly from air traffic control, the pilot can be heard telling that a passenger had diarrhoea “all the way through the airplane, so they want us to come back to Atlanta,”
A Delta Airlines Airbus A350 turned around back to Atlanta Friday night because of diarrhea throughout the airplane from a passenger and it’s a biohazard.
The FAA flight strip for DL194 was posted to Reddit ( xStang05x) Also a passenger posted here asking why her son’s… pic.twitter.com/VWbkB47wF1
As per the BBC, the plane was cleaned and flew to Barcelona the next day.
Delta confirmed in a statement to Insider website that the plane had to take a u-turn to Atlanta due to a “medical issue” on board and because the plane had to get cleaned:
“Delta Flight 194 from Atlanta to Barcelona returned to Atlanta following an onboard medical issue.
“Our teams worked as quickly and safely as possible to thoroughly clean the airplane and get our customers to their final destination. We sincerely apologise to our customers for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans.”
A drunk male passenger in business class on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi allegedly unzipped his pants and urinated on a female co-passenger, earning a ban from the airline for 30 days.
The incident took place in late November, however, the airline took notice on Wednesday after the woman wrote to the group chairman of Air India, N Chandrasekaran. She described the episode as the “most traumatic flight I have ever experienced”.
According to the female passenger who is in her 70s, after urinating, the man allegedly kept exposing himself and didn’t move until another passenger asked him to return to his seat.
The woman complained to the crew and told them her clothes, shoes, and bag were soaked in urine. The crew allegedly gave her a set of pajamas and slippers and told her to return to her seat which was covered in sheets but still reeked of urine
The airline has also filed a police complaint against the man and constituted an internal committee to investigate the matter.
Specifics of the Lahore Airport expansion project were recently discussed at a meeting of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) management, and Nespak.
According to The News, the runway that is now being constructed was also discussed. The discussion went over the operational issues at Lahore Airport, as well as the concerns that travellers confront, and offered remedies.
Additionally, the attendees discussed the airport’s security status and the importance of developing a comprehensive security policy. The minister was approached with a suggestion to divide the international and domestic lounges at Lahore Airport.
Lahore Airport’s expansion is urgently needed, according to Federal Minister for Aviation, Khawaja Saad Rafique, since the confluence of flights is causing passengers complications. The presence of birds within airport boundaries threatens aviation safety.
The meeting was attended by Civil Aviation Authority Director General Khaqan Murtaza, ASF Director General Major General Abid Latif Khan, Nespak Managing Director Dr Tahir Masood, PIA General Manager Syed Zulqarnain Mehdi, General Manager Technical Support Agha Sami, and government officials.
